This Is Endometriosis
2022 · 19m · UK
Directed by Matt Houghton, Georgie Wileman
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
An intimate first-person documentary in which photographer Georgie Wileman excavates a decade of living with endometriosis — the disabling pain, the cycle of medical disbelief, and the time the disease has stolen from her.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects illness docs to be either clinical or inspirational—This Is Endometriosis does neither, instead using Wileman's own photographs as a kind of visual diary that refuses to resolve into meaning, which is genuinely unnerving in the best way.
The collage of self-documentation, archive, and reconstruction sits within a lineage of first-person essay film, but the decision to let fragmented memory and still imagery do the storytelling work—rather than authoritative narration—marks a formal departure worth considering seriously.
The masterstroke is how Wileman's own photography becomes the film's skeleton: by choosing to build the narrative around her own visual language rather than external footage, the entire piece becomes an act of reclamation, turning documentation into ownership in a way that costs almost nothing but changes everything.
Reviews
Both films are acts of radical intimacy, women turning the lens toward their own bodies, their own histories, their own pain, refusing the observational distance documentary sometimes hides behind.
An act of radical intimacy where Wileman and Houghton excavate a decade of living with a disease that affects roughly one in ten women yet remains chronically underfunded, under-researched, and all too frequently disbelieved.
Festivals
- BAFTA Film Awards 2026, Winner — Best British Short Film
- Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2022
- Grierson Awards 2025, Nominee
- Kinsale Shark Awards, Gold Shark
- Webby Awards, Honouree